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WA is expected to be the biggest beneficiary, followed by Queensland and NSW.

Greens senator Penny Wright said she had heard there was a whale carcass sitting on ice in Adelaide because researchers don't have the funding to work out why it stranded on a South Australian beach earlier this year.

"It seems to me this would be a perfect use of the money the government has supposedly set aside to address whale strandings, but apparently they haven't even considered this as a possibility," she told AAP.

Meanwhile, the Senate has been told Australia is working with New Zealand on a plan to respond to Japanese scientific whaling should it resume in the 2015/16.

Details of the plan, such as monitoring methods, were not released to the Senate's environment estimates committee for "operational" reasons.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt met Japan's state minister for foreign affairs, Minoru Kiuchi, in Tokyo in early March to discuss Japan's new Southern Ocean program proposal.

Mr Hunt said the government would provide "robust scrutiny" of Japan's proposal.